Approvals, Records & Rollout

You know which workflow to hand over first and what it's worth. The last piece is deciding what the agent does on its own and what waits for you, making sure every action is on the record, and switching it on in a way that never surprises a client, an advisor or your CCO.

Write your approval rules

Approval rules are the heart of running agents at an advisory firm. Write them down before the agent goes live, and share them with everyone who'll be approving. A sensible starting set:

• Every client-facing email, text or form is approved at first. No exceptions while the agent is new. Later, you may let truly routine messages (a “your documents arrived” note, say) go out on their own, if you and your CCO are comfortable.
• Never: withholding elections. The agent can prepare a distribution form, but the withholding choice is left blank for the client and advisor.
• Never: trades or rebalancing. Agents don't place, suggest or schedule trades.
• Never: money movement. Agents don't initiate distributions, journals, wires or transfers out. They can prepare paperwork and track it once a person has acted.
• Never: advice. If a client asks a question that needs an advisor's judgment, the agent routes it to the advisor rather than answering.
• Always ask when unsure. Anything the agent isn't confident about comes to a person.

Decide where approval requests go, such as a text, an email or a Teams or Slack message, and who covers when the approver is out. Make sure it's somewhere people actually check, or the agent's drafts will sit waiting.

Keep a record of everything

Registered investment advisers have record-keeping obligations, including for communications with clients. When an agent drafts emails, updates the CRM and prepares forms, those actions belong in your records the same way your team's would. At a minimum, every agent action should be logged: what it did, when, for which household, and who approved it.

Exactly what you need to keep, in what form and for how long depends on your firm and how it's registered, so check with your CCO or compliance consultant before you go live. Good questions to bring to them:

• Which agent actions need to be retained, and where should those records live?
• Do client emails sent after approval need to flow through our existing archiving system?
• What vendor due diligence do we need on the agent and the tools it connects to?
• Do our written policies and procedures, or anything in our Form ADV, need updating?
• How will we protect client information the agent can see?

Nothing in this course is legal or compliance advice. It's a starting point for that conversation.

Keep data access tight

Give the agent access only to the systems and folders it needs for its one job. A Transfer Agent needs to see transfer status in your custodian portal and send email; it doesn't need your whole shared drive or trading permissions. Connect agents through accounts your firm owns, so you can see what they're doing and switch off access at any time.

Test on last month's real work

Before the agent touches anything live, run it on last month's real meetings, onboarding packets or transfers. Compare its notes with what the advisor actually wrote, and its forms with what was actually submitted. You'll quickly spot a missing detail, a format that's off or a step it skipped, and you can fix it before a client ever sees anything.

Start in draft mode

For the first couple of weeks, the agent drafts and nothing more. Notes, CRM updates, forms and emails all land in your approvals, and you approve, edit or reject each one. It takes a few minutes a day and shows you quickly where the agent gets things right and where it needs a correction. Once a type of internal work, like CRM notes or transfer status reports, has been coming through clean for about two weeks, let that work run on its own. Client-facing messages keep their approval step until you decide otherwise.

Monitor, correct, then add the next agent

For the first month, spend a few minutes each week looking over what the agent did. When something isn't quite right, tell it the way you'd tell a new ops associate: “Always note the custodian in the subject line,” or “This household wants their CPA copied on everything.” It remembers, and the same correction rarely needs making twice.

When the first agent is running smoothly, go back to your list from Module 2 and pick the next one. Each new agent goes through the same steps, but faster, because your approval rules and record-keeping are already in place.

Want it built and run for you?

Everything in this course assumes you'll set up and look after your agent yourself. If you'd rather hand that off, Rivena starts with a free ops review of your week, picks the one workflow to hand off first, and builds, tests and runs the agent for you, with approval rules you control and every action logged. Our Starter is $1,500/month with a $2,500 setup fee, waived with a 3-month commitment.